Prabal Gurung / Spring 2011 RTW

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Prabal Gurung set a challenge for himself this season. “I wanted to make clothes that look easy, but are impossible to make,” he said a few days before the show. This was not your average send-out-a-T-shirt-and-call-it-couture approach, however. Hardly. His spring look was sharply hewn and futuristic, while deeply rooted in the dressmaking tradition. Expanding on the graphic, textural, and sculptural explorations of his last collection, Gurung’s dresses were feats of engineering. There were long, lean, body-skimming dresses in spliced scuba, some decked with sinuous curved ruffles, others inset with translucent panels. And this new elongated silhouette looked dead-on right. Gurung’s color range was just as bold—saffron, coral, aqua, ivory, red, and black—which meant that color-blocked cashmeres were almost electric. There was a vibrant, sportif feel to it all that made the collection come to life. You have to marvel at a young designer who can keep all these elements in check.